


somebody's in-between girl

by mockturtletale



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Body Worship, Change in Appearance, Fixation, M/M, Multi, Other, Pre-OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2012-09-26
Packaged: 2018-02-06 07:50:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1850200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mockturtletale/pseuds/mockturtletale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan returns to Edmonton having made some changes. Jordan and Taylor adjust their view of him accordingly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	somebody's in-between girl

Jordan has been back at morning skate since Monday, and it's been great to get back at it. He's not thinking about the lockout, or their chances this year if it doesn't go ahead. He's not thinking about anything but being back out there with the team and gearing up for the season that he's really hoping is about to start. 

It's always fun to catch up with the guys, but Jordan has a little extra pep in his step today, because it's Friday and both Ryan and Taylor are going to be here. 

Jordan has already left to go and grab breakfast by the time Hallsy texts him to say he's dropping his stuff off at the house and then heading straight out to practice, and Jordan kind of wishes he'd waited when Taylor told him to go ahead, thinking he'd be late, but this works too. They can head home together and catch up properly, and Jordan won't even mind that much when Taylor inevitably wheedles him into helping get him unpacked. 

Jordan and Taylor are best friends, and they've talked almost every day since they last saw one another, but Jordan misses him anyway. Last season they'd bumped their friendship up to the 'added benefits' package, and even though Jordan hooked up a few times back home, he's not surprised to find that he misses Taylor's hands and his mouth almost as much as he misses just getting to hang out with him every day. 

It's maybe a little weirder that he finds himself having missed Ryan too. 

Ryan isn't one of his closest friends or anything. He's his teammate, and he and Taylor and Jordan had gotten lumped together for a bunch of promotional stuff throughout the season, but Ryan generally tends to hang out with Jeff and Jonesy, while Jordan and Taylor's closest friends on the team are probably Whits and Sutts. They've got Gags in common, but it's not as though Ryan was there every time they went out with Gags and vice versa. 

Still, Jordan is looking forward to seeing Ryan. He's all caught up with the good ol' boys who have been here since long before he was, and the new kids seem cool, but they're still new. Ryan might have been the rookie last year, and he's definitely still a kid, but he's coming back this year as _theirs_ , and Jordan thinks maybe they'll spend more time together this season. Maybe he'll make sure that he and Taylor make that effort. There had definitely been times last year when Jordan had found himself wishing Ryan was around more outside of practices and games, and that's something Taylor has echoed. Maybe now that Ryan isn't quite so new and hopefully won't be nearly as shy, the three of them can hang out more. 

Ryan is a good kid. Jordan can't wait to catch up with him. 

 

\----

 

Hallsy beats him to rink. He's already in the locker room when Jordan arrives, but he's the only one there so after a surreptitious glance around the room he's quick to turn their hug into something much closer to an ass grab. He goes in for a kiss too, because he really is completely shameless, but Jordan laughs and pushes him away and tells him 'no chance.' He follows it up with a quiet, sappy 'hey, I missed you', though, and the grin Taylor gives him in return serves as sharp reminder of just how much Jordan has missed him. 

 

\---- 

 

The locker room is filling up by the time Ryan arrives. It's loud, louder than it's been all week because Taylor is back now and harassing rookies and vets alike. Jordan's face already aches a little from smiling so wide. 

He's so distracted by Taylor's antics, in fact, that he doesn't even notice when Ryan first slips in. One minute the spot directly across the room from Jordan's is empty, and the next Jordan glances over and Ryan is standing there, laughing quietly at something Dubes is saying and fiddling with the zipper on his hoodie. 

Jordan has to do a double take, and not because he's surprised that Ryan managed to appear basically out of thin air. 

It's a total cliché, but Jordan's eyes automatically fall into a head to toe scan of Ryan's body, trying to make sense of what he's seeing. 

Ryan's hair has grown out, but he's had it cut shorter in front and it makes him seem somehow older at the same time as it achieves an effortlessly mussed style which Jordan can only think to describe as inviting. It's weird to look at Ryan and suddenly find himself wanting to push his hands into his hair and _tug_ , but that's the point of those kinds of hairstyles, Jordan figures. 

He's tanned - even more tanned than Hallsy, who has the kind of skin that turns golden brown the instant he so much as cracks a window in July. The tan makes his dimples seem to stand out even starker, his jawline looking sharper, stronger. His mouth is such a nice flush of colorr against his skin now, and the fact that his cheeks can't appear as pink just adds to how much older Ryan looks. Maybe not quite as old as Jordan or Taylor, but definitely not even younger than he actually is, like he used to. 

His throat seems thicker, but that's insane, maybe Jordan is just confused by the fact that Ryan's arms are definitely much bigger than they were the last time he'd seen them - his biceps defined in a way that's matched perfectly by the way he's bulked up across his chest and shoulders - and all of that combined throwing Ryan's upper body into a kind of newly _right_ proportion that must be making Jordan see his throat differently. 

Ryan turns away to drop his bag on the ground, and Jordan feels something strangely like relief when he sees that Ryan's waist is still the same - trim and smaller than his chest and hips, less in a way that used to make him look kind of delicate but now strikes Jordan as a kind of interesting contradiction. Ryan is still small _er_ , if not small, but he no longer looks like they'll have to be careful with him. On the ice. Or whatever. 

When Ryan bends down to unlace his shoes, Jordan clutches the roll of stick tape he's holding so tightly that it bends in his hand, because wow. He really was not expecting that ass. Not on Ryan. _Wow_. That's ... that's new. 

Jordan shakes his head and turns away, mind still caught on the way Ryan's thighs have shaped up over the summer, the added muscle clinging in such nicely defined stretches that Jordan weirdly wants to trace the lines of them with his hands to see if they feel as good as they look. He gets this crazy image of Ryan's newly shaped calves thrown up over Taylor's shoulders, and he can't understand where that even comes from until he blinks and realizes that Taylor's naked shoulders are right there in front of his face and hello, _great_ , so maybe it's not that weird after all. 

Ryan looks good, is all. Really really good. 

That would be impossible not to notice. 

 

\----

 

Ryan waves across the room at Jordan a moment later, smiling brightly at him and hopefully not noticing the way that Jordan almost chokes on the mouthful of gatorade he'd been trying to swallow. 

Taylor notices, though. 

"Drink much?" he asks, glancing between Jordan and Ryan and giving them both a strangely speculative look before he turns away to haze Schultz some more. 

Jordan is oddly grateful for the opportunity to gear up without having to keep track of a conversation. 

 

\----

 

Skate is pretty fantastic, and it feels amazing to be out there with Taylor again. Jordan's constant awareness of Ryan is maybe a little sharper now than it had seemed last season, but they've always played really really well together and that awareness is a big part of it. That's nothing new. 

 

\---- 

What is new, however, is lots of things about Ryan. 

He's skating faster, his legs noticeably stronger and the force of his play-hits considerably more. 

But the biggest changes in him seem to be centred in his attitude, his comfort levels out on the ice and now, back in the locker room. 

Last season he'd found his feet pretty fast, but it had taken a lot longer for that sense of security to translate when they were just hanging out, chirping one another and getting ready for a game or coming down after one. 

Today the transition is seamless. Ryan steps off the ice and doesn't waver once. He's still as quiet as ever, but there's no trace of the sense that he's any quieter than he wants to be. He seems self-assured and content in a way that Jordan both envies and - somewhat randomly - wants to test. Ryan talks to everyone, laughs along with everything that's happening around him and is generally present in the locker room in a way that he wasn't last year. There's no fear to it, no sense that he's worried he's overstepping or falling short of what's expected of him. He doesn't look to anyone for approval, and that's what gets under Jordan's skin most of all. He'd become kind of accustomed to being someone that Ryan looked to often - looked up to and sought direction from. 

Ryan is looking at him today, but not for direction. Not like he needs Jordan's approval. And Jordan finds that he wants him to. But then Ryan glances up at Jordan from where he'd been concentrating on lacing up his sneakers, and levels him with this weirdly assessing, curious kind of look, almost like he's never seen Jordan before and is trying to figure him out for the very first time. 

And that's when Jordan realizes that he wants to earn Ryan's approval in return. 

 

\----

 

Jordan walks away from the locker room that day feeling like he hasn't got a clue where he stands with Ryan for the first time ever. Ryan doesn't feel like their rookie anymore, but he feels like more than simply their teammate and their equal. IT feels like there's all of a sudden this brand new potential for him to be _more_ , somehow. And Jordan does not understand that. 

Not until Taylor tries to hip check him into a wall in the parking lot, that is. 

They're in such a good mood after being reunited on the ice that Taylor is basically bouncing next to him, tugging at Jordan's sleeve to get his attention and talking a mile a minute as they head back to their trucks. 

Ryan is walking with them, a half step behind Jordan on his left, but he's distracted by something on his phone and seemingly disinterested in their conversation. Jordan isn't annoyed by it. He's not. So what if any other newly-non-rookie would probably have the good grace to still hold their near-elders in a much higher regard? Ryan is their friend. Jordan isn't pissy about not having his full attention. Really he's not. 

Suddenly finding himself with it maybe puts that into perspective though, because Taylor gets a bit too exuberant in his need to touch Jordan and very nearly succeeds in shoving him right through a wall, and that's when Jordan finds himself blinking at the wall he was just sent sailing toward, held very tightly, very _capably_ safe from harm’s way by the arm Ryan has banded around Jordan's middle and used to tug him back against Ryan's very defined, very newly appealing chest. 

When Jordan catches his breath and realizes this, he's promptly breathless all over again, because Ryan just reached for him and pulled him in like it was nothing. Like it was easy. And it has definitely never been what anyone could deem 'easy' for Ryan to manhandle Jordan before. 

"Uh, you good?" Ryan asks, and that's when Jordan snaps out of his daze to realize that he's been standing there, lost in thought, holding onto Ryan's forearm with both hands. His fingers don't even fit completely around Ryan's wrist anymore, but Jordan can't find it in himself to be sad about that when he's busy finding it kind of inexplicably hot instead. 

"Oh, yeah, sure. Thanks," Jordan says, waiting until Ryan tries to move away before he lets go, because has he mentioned _wow_? He really wouldn't mind spending the rest of the afternoon held back against Ryan's body, having Ryan behind him taller and broader in the shoulders now, bigger than Jordan in a way that's totally different to how Taylor is bigger than him, because Ryan is still smaller too. He's in between. Built in a way that suggests to Jordan that maybe between them is exactly where he should be. 

"No problem," Ryan says, smiling distractedly at them both once more before he goes back to whatever he's doing on his phone, simply nodding at them when he reaches his truck and they wave him off. 

 

\----

 

"So Ryan is weird now," Taylor says when they get back to the house. 

Jordan isn't about to point out how it's maybe weirder that he had to drive home from morning skate half hard because of Ryan's _arms_ , because it doesn't seem like the time or the place. 

"You think?" he asks instead, because if Taylor has noticed all of the changes in Ryan too then Jordan will definitely feel better about this. 

"For sure. He's like ... bigger? And not terrified of me anymore. I don't think I like that. But I think maybe I really like it, too." 

"Yeah," Jordan says, because _exactly_. 

They stand there looking at one another, silently musing about the changes in their teammate, until Taylor ruins the moment by stripping off his shirt and distracting Jordan with his shoulders again. 

"Wanna go break in Whits' bed before he gets to town?" 

"You're a bad person, Hallsy," Jordan says mournfully as he follows Taylor down the hall, but after the day he's had he's wondering if that's not something that's rubbed off on him too. 

He stops thinking about it for long enough to let Taylor rub off on him in other ways, but it plays on his mind that evening and right up until he falls asleep that night. 

He's weirdly excited about seeing Ryan tomorrow. Even moreso than he had been this morning. 

And in suddenly very different ways. 

It’s all very unsettling. 

 

\----


End file.
